The hand is still,
The writer died,
Would it have been better
If he had lied?

Thinking Of Donald Rumsfeld And Dick Cheney And The Troubles They Made

They should have been hipsters,
                             mythologists of aimlessness,
phantasm worshippers,
                             marginal men,
fluid spiritual seekers,
                            fiery, hot to create new selves

Wine Country

Astispumante me
put your lips
to my
Piedmont region
I insist
my grapes are tender

I do not care
what I hear
from atmospheric waves

Grenache you are

How To Lose Weight                                                                                                            

by J. W. M. Morgan

n her death bed, my beloved Grandmother Matilda insisted I destroy her handwritten recipe collection—precious yellowed pages clipped together and hidden at the bottom of the otherwise abandoned wooden vegetable bin in the pantry of the big house in Woonsocket. I reluctantly pledged to carry out her dying wish, though I knew I would later regret the loss of her brilliant life work. Grandma, a great cook and a sensationally private New England woman, had raised me from age five when my parents had inexplicably disappeared from a “fat farm” in upstate New York. (My mother had suffered a glandular condition, cause of her severe overweight. My father was only moderately heavy but, at Grandma Matilda’s persistent urging, had agreed to accompany my mother to the therapy program for moral support. No trace of my parents had ever been found.)

Grandma Matilda had gone into temporary decline when my father had married and moved from the house. When I came to depend on her as a young boy, she was thrilled by her second chance at the joys of motherhood. She often said raising me was the great pleasure of the second half of her life and she planned to make me so happy I would never want to leave. Perhaps she had succeeded at this. At thirty-eight, I was a bachelor piano teacher and lived with her in our drafty, high-ceilinged home in Rhode Island. At the time of her pulmonary failure, we were still eating most meals together. Our attachment ran deep. I couldn’t say I loved my grandmother—the trauma of losing my parents at a young age had rendered me incapable of that much-vaunted emotion. But I was extremely accustomed to having Grandma nearby. I counted on her large mammalian presence for my emotional stability; let me put it like that and move on.

I had secretly consulted my grandmother’s forbidden recipes in earnest a year before her death, when my life companion, my cat, Skippy, had developed a kidney stone and the vet advised against surgery. Old Skipperoo was already eleven then, not yet feeble, definitely an elderly feline. Though not an affectionate cat, Skippy was my best friend and I was compelled to do everything I could for him. The kidney stone caused him excruciating pain; he was yowling day and night. Grandma Matilda had never explicitly forbidden me to look at her manuscript. Well, that’s a lie, strictly speaking. She had caught me eyeing the wrinkled pages some years before and scolded me severely. That’s when I had learned of a recipe called “Curing a Cat.”

The treatment was successful. Raw, ground turkey meat formed the succulent and deceptive base but I’d had to seek out a number of arcane ingredients as well—many spices but also components I had to order online from a chemical supply house, and one I had to extract from an over-the-counter medication through a slow process of crushing and distilling which the recipe advised should not be publicized. Skippy had recovered and was now happily trotting about. Old Skip was a great string chaser and I kept a stick with string tied to the end and whirled it about for him at all hours.

With my grandmother gone, our aging house felt alarmingly empty. To save heat, I closed off the third floor and much of the second, including Grandma’s old bedroom, with taped-up sheets of plastic. As winter clamped down and the period of daylight grew short, I staved off lonely panic struggling at the piano. In my late teens, I had vowed to master Schubert’s glorious Gasteiner (Piano Sonata No. 17 in D major, Opus 53), a work notorious for technical and interpretive challenge. Our partially wooded lot was large and isolated. I could pound at the keyboard at two or three or four a.m.—no neighbor would object. Skippy would curl beside me on the piano bench, or sometimes march across the top of the piano as I labored to scale those lofty Schubertian peaks.

I hated  my seemingly incurable fumbling at the keyboard—my fingers sometimes felt like wooden clothespins. But that could change, I counseled myself. With hard work and devotion, I would unlock my latent talent. My technical confusion would dissipate. I would master the elusive balance of will and obeisance great playing required. The transformation I yearned for could come. My false, provisional existence would end; my true finally start. Best of all, I would set aside my dreary adjunct faculty life at the community college for the career of touring and recording my ambitious heart demanded.

Such fancies enabled me to cobble together a state of apparent good cheer, a mask most useful when confronting my socially trying work days at the college. But faking emotional well-being had its hazards. Through mis-calibration I sometimes triggered unintended consequences. For example, my first day back at school after New Year’s I grinned excessively at Leonard Pyecraft, the balloon-cheeked tuba teacher, as he came off the end of the cafeteria line, tray in hand. I accidentally attracted the old gas bag.

Hideous Pyecraft, a hopeless bachelor like myself, grinned back, settled into the seat facing mine, two full-sized artichoke/pineapple/anchovy pizzas on his tray, his bump of a chin nearly lost in the shivering bib of flesh beneath his jaw. “I really need to jettison some of this poundage,” he said, his generally baritone voice flirting with a ridiculous falsetto. He eyed my slim torso. “How do you stay so thin?” he asked. “You must have a tapeworm.” His palm almost touched my belly but I backed away in time. He slapped and lifted his flabby breasts, then packed his mouth full.

Revolting.

At home at my Steinway baby grand, the brooding main theme of the Gasteiner’s second movement defied me once again. Skippy chose this time to walk on the keyboard, at the high end, inadvertently mocking my attempt. I picked him up and stroked him, then locked him in Grandma’s old bedroom with my newly acquired robot vacuum cleaner. The robot, shaped like a giant hockey puck, lurched and bumped around the dusty room. Skippy got a kick from the near-sentient invention. He tried to bat it around and I’d even seen him ride atop it. I let Skip and the robot entertain one another. Their thumps and the roar of the little machine cut into my loneliness a bit. I could pretend Grandma was up there doing the cleaning as she used to.

My grandmother’s manuscript still lay in the bottom of the musty vegetable bin. While helping Skippy I had noticed a page titled “Play the Piano.” For over a year I had scrupulously excluded the memory of that page from my thoughts.

Crushed mango and yogurt were among the surprising ingredients.

Unusual dreams plagued me. My grandmother’s cold spirit admonished me from beyond the grave. I promised to fulfill her dying wish soon.

That following Tuesday morning, after I taught my 9 a.m. piano class, Helen, the gaunt, wraithlike flute teacher, approached me. I made an effort not to stare at her meager bosom or her sorry hair, previously wispy blond, now black and very thin. Rumor said she suffered from an incurable scalp fungus. “Who’s the guest pianist?” Helen asked, scratching near her widow’s peak.

“There’s no guest pianist,” I said. Politeness compelled me to look away from Helen’s pale roots and the yellow dust on her forehead.

“I heard someone playing Schubert,” she insisted, nodding toward my classroom. “Sounded good.”

“Thank you. That was me,” I said. Her wide dark eyes betrayed her astonishment. I wiggled my fingers in the air before her. My immoderate self-satisfaction threatened to erupt as an uncouth grin.

Pyecraft’s approach deflated the mood. “Eating lunch at noon?” he asked me. Helen made her abrupt escape. He touched my shirtfront with his chubby fingers, causing me to recoil. “I enjoy eating lunch with you,” he said. “You and me have a natural chemistry. I feel like we could be real friends. Just let me know what time you want to eat.”

I told him I would be in the cafeteria at the usual time and immediately regretted it.

Pyecraft and I shared the noontime table. Naturally, no one sat with us or even nearby. Pyecraft ate like an animal—chicken grease migrated from his hands up his wrists as he gnawed. Halfway through consuming a chicken breast, Pyecraft dropped his mask and said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you about your grandmother’s famous cookbook.”

            Despite Grandma Matilda’s stern admonishments about privacy and discretion from time to time I had relieved life’s oppressiveness by bragging about her achievements—in only the most guarded of terms, of course. I understood we must avoid the wrong kinds of attention. But I had been unable to keep my mouth completely shut. My blabbing had put Pyecraft on the trail. I now understood the root cause of his excessive friendliness and I loathed him all the more for it.

A better man would have told Pyecraft to forget my grandmother’s legacy, to try a Stairmaster, and investigate having his stomach stapled. (I fantasized briefly that he might have his mouth fastened shut with a big, copper clip.) But I gave him what he’d asked for and I admit to evil pleasure in the act. That night I hand-copied the most pertinent page: How to Lose Weight. The next morning I made myself a bologna and cheese sandwich so I wouldn’t have to face Pyecraft in the cafeteria. I placed the weight-loss recipe in Pyecraft’s mailbox at the school and ate lunch sitting alone in my car.

Thursday Pyecraft did not appear at the college. “Where’s fatso?” Helen asked. She wore black lipstick, which suited her. I smiled, stabbed a crouton with my fork, and waved it in the air.

“Couldn’t say exactly,” I replied. I was not Pyecraft’s keeper.

That night a blizzard dropped ten more inches on our already snow-beleaguered town. On the Friday drive to work, I followed a snowplow and skidded twice, scaring myself. At noontime, I again enjoyed lunch in the cafeteria at a table of my own.

On the way home, curiosity got the better of me and I swung by Leonard Pyecraft’s modest ranch house, located in a fresh development on the northern outskirts. His walkway was un-shoveled but I had my boots on and trudged close.

As I approached his front door I heard horrible blubbering and faint kitten-like cries for help. I walked around to the side of the house and looked in the window into his dining room. Pyecraft, dressed in blue-patterned pajamas of oceanic proportions, floated against the ceiling like a flabby balloon, the fabric of his pant cuffs caught in the bangles of the chandelier.

In Praise Of Grandparents                                                                          

by Monica B. Morris  

 e who are grandparents all know how important our grandchildren are to us, the eagerness with which we awaited their birth and the rush of pure love we felt when we first held them in our arms. We marveled at their tiny, perfect fingers and at the sweep of their long lashes across their cheeks, and we continue to delight in their antics as we watch them grow, year by year. But it may be not be until those children are adults themselves that they will realize how important their grandparents are—or were—to them.

     Now that I—finally—have a grandchild of my own, I’ve been thinking about my own grandparents and the ways they influenced me. Both couples were immigrants, one pair escaping the pogroms of Russia , the other fleeing the military pressgangs of Romania (My grandfather used to joke that soldiers in the Romanian army had to buy their own bullets!)  They sailed to England at the turn of the 20^th century, traveling steerage, of course, and carrying only some clothes, some bedding, a few pots and pans and a pair of candlesticks to keep the light of God shining in their home on the Sabbath.

     When she arrived, my maternal grandma was just three months pregnant with my mother, the firstborn of six children, the first British generation in our family. My paternal grandparents arrived at the London docks holding two little boys by the hand. My father was the first of their children to be born in England , followed closely by another boy, a girl, and one more boy.

     The two sets of immigrants had not a word of English among them nor could any of them read or write in any language. Their lives were much like those of most poor immigrants anywhere. They made their first homes in tenement buildings with few amenities—kitchens with whitewashed walls and primitive cooking stoves.  I recall rooms filled with cigarette smoke as the “boys”—my uncles—and my Russian grandpa, chain smokers all, lit new cigarettes from the embers of the old.

     None of the sons were old enough to enlist during WW1 but when WW11 was declared, several grandsons joined the army, the navy, or the air force. My Romanian grandparents, though, were declared “enemy aliens” and had to observe a curfew that kept them indoors from sundown to sunup. I couldn’t understand how anyone would consider my gentle grandpa an enemy; he had become as proudly British as if his lineage dated back to Alfred the Great!

     I was especially devoted to my Romanian grandparents and it was they who made me feel so welcome, so loved, that I couldn’t wait to get to their house at the weekends.  As I entered those difficult teen years, and   my father’s protection of me became ever more heavy-handed, my grandparents’ home became my haven, my escape. My mother knew that and wisely encouraged the close relationship.

     Grandpa greeted me at the front door and engulfed me in a huge embrace. “Our Monchie is here!” he’d shout back into the house, using their nickname for me. Grandma and the three “girls”—daughters born late in grandma’s fertile years (the youngest was only 6 years older than me)—dashed to the door to greet me with more hugs, as though they had been counting the minutes to my arrival! I felt completely at home there, an integral part of a loving, welcoming family.

     The “girls”—my aunts, although I never called them auntie—took me dancing on Saturday nights at the local dance hall and grandpa, who didn’t even hint at his concern about a kid barely in her teens going to places where there would be soldiers and airmen from foreign lands, waved us blithely on our way with the admonition to  “Have a good time!” Later, he would hide behind the front hedge until he saw us walking back towards the house—and then, assured that we were home safe, he’d duck inside, thinking we hadn’t seen him!

     Grandma was a wonderful cook and I still use her recipes to this day—great puddings and cakes.  Not that they were written down then. It was “a pinch of this and a handful of that and a few of those” that my aunts and I translated into ounces and tablespoons. In return, I tried to teach grandma to read and write in English, and after much effort and practice, she did manage to sign her name in beautiful script. By this time her spoken English was quite good, although she occasionally misunderstood a subtlety or a nuance. I still get teased about the time a neighbor asked her if I was taking thyroid (to control my puppy fat). She responded cheerfully, “Oh, Monica vill eat anyting!”

     She loved me without reservations and she was generous in her encouragement. “Our Monchie can do anything!” my grandma would say, “She’s going to be a doctor one day”—expressing the wish of all immigrants for their children and grandchildren to build successful lives. I wonder if she realized how much her expressions of confidence in me helped to build my sense of worth. She made me believe I really could do whatever I set my hand and mind to, and I still do. Years and years later, when my own family had migrated to the United States, I thought of how proud and pleased grandma would have been that I achieved the goal she set for me— even though I wasn’t a medical doctor, which I’m sure was what she had in mind, but still...

     Grandma lived long enough to see me married and to welcome each of my three children. A snapshot in my photograph album shows my new baby daughter, the third of my children, on grandma’s lap, my mother and I flanking her at left and right—four generations of “women.” We three adults had all been young mothers and I wonder, sometimes, if the trend to later parenting might mean two-generation families rather than three or even four generations. Some children may not have grandparents for long, if at all, and I feel a bit sad that they might not experience that unconditional love in their lives.  Grandparents and grandchildren have a unique, mutually enriching relationship. I relish those memories of my grandparents and I hope I can offer my granddaughter the kind of self-confidence that they gave to me.

Return to Prose

Return to Top of  Page

Invitation To The Sandbox                                                                           

by Matthew Zanoni Müller

don’t remember who it was, but it must have been a male relative, or the boyfriend of a female relative, that built our sandbox. It couldn’t have been my father, who shunned all things practical, preferring the world of music or the world of class preparations, to that of physical labor. But sand was delivered, and boards put into a rectangle outside the kitchen window, beneath my mother’s ever watchful gaze as she cooked, or did the dishes, or talked on the phone. For years I played there with my older brother Ed, filling our afternoons with cities of sand until it got dark and my mother called us inside for dinner.

One day though, things changed in the sandbox. After my mother said I was allowed to get up from the breakfast table that day, I ran quickly to my room to get my trucks and cars. Finally it wasn’t raining anymore, like it had for so many days, and we could go back outside and play in the sandbox. I asked my older brother, who had followed me to our room, if he wanted to go play in the sandbox with me. He said, “No, I don’t really feel like it,” which I knew meant that I had to convince him. I had to show him it would be fun, because he always came out to play in the end.

 I said I would bring all the trucks out to make the construction and we could build roads and bridges again like the last time. He stood in the door leaning against the frame and watched me putting the trucks together in a basket on the floor and then he shook his head again, no, he really didn’t feel like it. I looked up at him and then back at the trucks and I couldn’t understand how he didn’t love to see them moving all the earth and their engines going and the men shouting but he just stood there and didn’t care.

 So I said, “We could bring the cars out too, and the houses, and we could make the whole city with skyscrapers and I can turn on the hose and we can make drip buildings and then make smooth slides for people to go down and this time maybe we can use plastic when we try to build the river so that it doesn’t always disappear.”

 But he just said no, I could go ahead by myself, he was just going to stay inside. Then he walked away. I looked back at the trucks and then at the cars. I sat for a minute to think and then I quickly put all of the cars into the basket with all of the trucks and I found the little box of plastic people and I took some houses and I brought them all out in two trips and when I walked by him sitting in the living room I tried to smile really big, as though I were already having so much fun.

When I got outside I quickly pulled the hose over from under the kitchen window to make the drip buildings. I made lines in the box where the roads would be for the city and the bridges and tunnels. I would make it the best sandbox city ever and when my brother would look out the window he would see how good it was and then he would want to come out and play with me and we could finish building it together. I started to make the roads and the drip buildings and whenever I saw my mother’s face in the kitchen window I would yell to her to ask Ed if he wanted to come out and play yet and she would ask and then always come back and shake her head.

“Maybe if he comes to look,” I tried.

She turned to ask and soon both her and my brother appeared at the window. I tried to make my whole face light up and in a grand gesture I put my hands out to either side. My mother slid the window open so he could hear me and I quickly showed him all the roads and explained how they all worked so he could see how great the city was but he just smiled and said, “That’s really awesome, that’s a really awesome city,” and moved away from the window.

Soon I forgot to ask for my brother, I got too involved in road construction and traffic jams, the steep streets with their windy skyscraper canyons, the taxi’s honking, people getting angry and others selling things from little stands, Fresh Fish, Ripe Apricots, and sometimes I would stop when there had been a traffic accident or a drip of sand landed accidentally on a house like a meteor, and look back at the window and my mother’s face in it looking down at the sink with her golden hair, not looking out at me. The sounds from my father’s piano inside came out to me through the screen, and my brother was somewhere inside those walls, maybe reading, or interested in something new I couldn’t quite imagine, more like my parents now, than like me. I turned, looked at yard, which was growing into twilight, and got the first inkling of what it might be like to be witnessed only by the clouds above, steeped in color, and turning slowly to grey at their summit. 

Penny                                                                            

by Quentin Poulsen

  knew there was a Penny, and that she was not just another character in the soap opera Benny tried to pass off as his life. I knew because of the pompous voice I heard in the hall from time to time, long after I’d gone to bed, and from the gasps and groans that emanated from her room late some evenings. However, almost two weeks passed before I actually saw her.

“I’m having a party this afternoon." She peered down at me from the staircase.

"Is it your birthday?"

"No. I’ve passed my university exams.”

“Congratulations.”

“It’s no big deal.”

“You must be very smart.”

“Unfortunately, yes. It’s a big problem for men, you know. They’re all so intimidated.” She continued on up the stairs, carrying a glossy magazine with her.

Personally I didn’t want to be around when the uni freaks came over, played loud music, drank til they threw up, got high on drugs, had sex on the carpet, and did whatever else they did at the student parties you always heard about. So I took the train out to Ngaio to see my old team play.

Watching the game, I didn’t miss it either. All the dirty tricks; elbows flying, guys getting shoved in the back, others held down by their jerseys. Scuffles broke out, punches were thrown. That was rugby and you just accepted it. A guy could punch you in the face or stomp on your head but you always shook hands afterward to show you were a genuine bloke and left it all out there on the field.

There was a free-kick and Stumpy refused to hand over the ball. I heard the blow from the sideline; a meaty slap. And everyone just stood there gawking, including the ref – one of those bald skeletal type with no arse. He just acted like he hadn’t even seen it.

I’d planned to have a chat with the guys during the break but when they huddled around Bruce for the team-talk he let fly with such a barrage of expletives, hurling his orange quarter into the mud for effect, that I opted to keep my distance.  I  wasn’t in the club uniform, for one thing. And neither did they pay any attention to me. Truth was, I realised, I had nothing in common with them any more, now that I was no longer a player.

I left before the second half began and was home by five. I’d stay in my room and read a book until the party was over. I could stuff toilet paper in my ears if the noise was too loud.

The anticipated din of music was strangely absent as I walked up the drive, however. I continued on inside, hoping the party was over already.

Poking my head through the doorway, I was startled to discover neither a crowded living room nor an empty one, but a group of nerds sitting around watching TV. They were straight out of ‘Wayne’s World,’ these guys, what, with their bad haircuts, zits and spectacles. One of them extended a friendly ‘How’s it going?’ and pointed out they were watching the cricket. We only required a run-rate of two point three an over to win, another explained, though it meant nothing to me.

“Bluddy currymunchers are sendin’ down googlies,” added the first.

There came a loud peel of laughter from upstairs and a moment later Penny herself led a bunch of similarly overgrown young women into the room. Even the smallest of them would have been bigger than any of these nerds.

Penny, sporting circular glasses for the occasion, spread a few of her glossy magazines around the dining room table and they all sat there, guzzling softdrinks, munching savouries and flicking through the pages. I detected no sign of alcohol nor any other intoxicating substance. It seemed I had misjudged her.

“Sport?!” Penny stared across at the TV screen, aghast.

“Harmless, innit?”

“Like the South African rugby tour, you mean? All those riots in the street?”

“We played soccer with Indonesia. Nobody protested about Timor.”

A flash of annoyance behind the circular glasses, though Penny offered no response - amazingly. Where in hell was 'Timor' anyway?

Another peel of laugher, this time from the giant blonde at the rear of the table. She held up the magazine up for the others to see.

A chorus of shrieks followed, then Penny brought the magazine over and paraded it before us. It was full of photographs of naked men. The nerds glanced up with perverse grins, then returned their attention to the cricket. As for me, I was intrigued mostly by the way Penny watched them, her eyes flickering like a serpent’s.  

 ***

I got him in the kitchen. It was irresistible, even with Abraham there. I let fly with a piercing chicken cluck and Benny’s feet literally left the floor. He spun around with this ferocious expression on his haggard features and started pursuing me around the house.

“This ‘as got to stop!” he croaked behind me. "You're weally very childish!"

I got him in the living room. He was eating ice-cream in his armchair, and so badly did I startle him the bowl flipped right out of his hands, ending up on the carpet with a dome of vanilla ice-cream beside it.

This time he didn’t bother reacting as I stood there laughing down at him, just busied himself cleaning up the ice-cream.

“Boy, I got you a beauty, eh!”

“Wot do you want now?” he muttered wearily.

Even as I carried on, I knew what a bastard I was being. But I was on top now, and I needed to keep it that way. Only on these terms could I deal with Benny.

I almost felt sorry for him, only he had this knack of doing things that annoyed hell out of me, like doing his ironing in his underwear, and flitting stark naked from his bedroom to the bathroom. It was disgusting, being confronted by his flabby white features like that. And what if Penny were around?

I had no idea what I was going to do as I slipped inside his room, only that I was determined to do something that would really drive him nuts. The rush of the shower going across the hall assured me I was in no danger of being caught, yet the stakes were high. If by some chance I were discovered, Abraham would throw me out for certain. I wanted to do something, just nothing Benny could be sure about. So when I spotted a tobacco pouch on the desk beside his bed, I grabbed it up and shoved it in my pocket. In doing so I noticed the cover of a magazine in a partly open drawer. The tanned hue of bare flesh had caught my eye. It turned out to be one of those nudist club magazines, with whole naked families in it. Personally I couldn’t see why anybody would want to perve at those people. They would’ve looked a lot better with their clothes on. Nonetheless, I snatched he magazine up and hurried out of the room with it.

I wasn’t as nervous about the stealing as I had been about sneaking into Benny’s room. If you stole something, they had to prove you took it, and they had to be certain it was stolen in the first place. My guess was, Benny wouldn’t be certain about the tobacco pouch and, as for the nudist magazine, chances were he’d be too embarrassed to say anything.

There was a stack of magazines In the upstairs toilet; Penny's at the top but a wide variety further down. They’d been accumulating for as long as I’d been there, and probably for decades longer, judging by the yellowish tinge on the ones near the bottom. I opened the nudist magazine to a picture of a rather flabby middle-aged woman and left it on top of the pile. What would Penny do, I wondered? Probably just ignore it. She seemed so liberal and open-minded after all.

There came an urgent banging on my door that evening, so loud I knew it wasn’t Abraham. And, sure enough, when I answered it the scowling features of Penny blazed in at me.

“Is this piece a filth yours?!” She thrust the nudist magazine toward me.

I assumed a mystified expression. “What is it?”

“A bluddy porn magazine! What does it look like?”

I glanced up at her, a little bewildered. She was clearly more upset about the magazine than I’d anticipated.

“Not mine. Prob’ly Benny’s.”

“I asked ‘im an’ he said it must be yours.”

I shook my head. “What’s the big deal anyway? Harmless innit?”

“Harmless? It’s porn, you idiot! Porn degrades women and encourages rape.”

“Looks like a nudist magazine to me. It's no worse than the magazines you read.”

She gave me a look as though I’d just vomited in front of her or something. “You 'are' confused, aren’t you?  This is a publication devoted entirely to nudity. And besides, women do not go aroun’ raping men.”

“An' I don’t go aroun’ raping women.”  With that I shut the door in her scowling, bespectacled face.

A more gentle tap on the door came later that night, and Abraham, amid a fair bit of head-scratching and shuffling of the feet, advised me Penny had complained about the magazine, which she regarded as sexual harassment. That sounded very sinister to me. Abraham must have been gaining the impression I was a regular trouble-maker, what, with the way I was always giving Benny a hard time as well. I assumed a mystified expression and denied all knowledge of the magazine prior to Penny herself showing it me.

Just a few days later I emerged from my bedroom to find Penny moving all her things out. Naturally she wasn’t moving them out herself. She had a team of nerds around to take care of that for her, while she stood around issuing orders as they hurried in and hobbled out.

I’d never disturbed Abraham in the morning before, but I felt terribly guilty. About five rounds of knocking were required (it was more like banging by the end), before his door creaked slightly open and he stood before me in his striped pajamas, his receding gray curls all awry, his sleep-crusted eyes squinting at the daylight.

“Is Penny leaving ‘cause a that magazine?”

“Oh no, I don’t believe so,” he said, trying in vain to brush some of his hair into place. “She’s simply been living beyond her means here.”

I asked him what he meant by that, and he informed me that she hadn’t been paying rent. The promised checks from her father had failed to arrive.

“How long’s this been going on?”

“Well, since she moved in, actually.” He’d given up on his hair and really looked quite silly, standing there in his striped pajamas, squinting at the daylight.

“Hell, Abraham, that’s at least two months. Can’t you go to the cops or something?”

He smiled and shook his head. It was a sad sort of smile, I thought. How could he have been so gullible?

Color-Blind                                                                                            

by Loren Stephens

           am scheduled to teach “Writing Memoir,” at the Japanese American National Museum .  I have taught this all-day workshop to hundreds of students, but I still suffer from performance anxiety.  I come up with all kinds of what if scenarios: What if I get lost on the Santa Monica Freeway; what if my alarm doesn’t go off and I oversleep, or worst of all, what if I can’t remember my lines.

The day before class, I follow a strict routine that has become my sacred ritual.  I listen to Natalie Goldberg’s CD, Old Friends from Far Away, review my 45-page handout and notes, and reread the excerpts that students will choose from by Frank McCourt, Amos Oz, Jeannette Walls, and Mabel Dodge Luhan. I can’t skip a step.  I’m like the trial lawyer who always enters the courtroom through the same door, wears his lucky tie, buys a bagel at the same delicatessen or uses the same pen the day of a summation.

I arrive at the museum in Little Tokyo at nine o’clock – an hour before the workshop is scheduled to begin.   Koji Sakai leads me down a dark hallway to a windowless classroom.  I hide my disappointment that I will not be teaching in the bright and airy second floor boardroom.  The tables are set up classroom style and I ask Koji to help me move them into a square so that the students and I will be facing one another, which will facilitate dialogue and feedback.

Koji excuses himself. I write my name, e-mail address, and a quotation from Mark Twain on the blackboard: “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter – it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”  And then to add some levity to what is surely a heart-stopping thought for novice writers, I write in big letters, “The candies in gold foil contain nuts.  If you are allergic, stick to the silver ones.” 

It is just nine thirty; but the door opens and my first student arrives, Roy K.  He tells me he is a docent at the museum, something he started doing after he retired from his engineering career at JPL in Pasadena .

Then he opens his iPad, “I read in your bio that you have made documentaries. I am making a film about one of the Japanese internment camps.  Mind if I show you some of it?  It’s not finished.”

I usually try to steal a few minutes to myself while the students are getting settled, but I did not want to appear rude.  “Sure. I’d love to see it.”

The film is made up of a series of still photographs, intercut with words describing the images. I have seen similar photographs in the museum’s collection and a replica of the camp at Manzanar.  Roy stops at a photograph of a gangly teenager with a man and woman, neatly dressed in white shirts and khaki trousers standing in front of a barracks. “That’s me with my parents at the Poston War Relocation Camp in Arizona .”

“I’d like to see the film when it is finished. Perhaps you’ll write something today about your memories of Poston.”

He shrugs his shoulders and sits down to my right.  I turn around and four other students are in their seats.  Koji announces that seven participants have cancelled at the last minute, so we can get started.  

I ask the students to introduce themselves – Kimiko M., a clerk in the Los Angeles County Assessor’s office, Jose S., a teacher’s aide in the Pasadena public school system,  June Y., a koto player and songwriter, and Roy. All adult learners who want to explore the genre of memoir. 

“Thank you.  We are lucky to have a small class today.  That will give each of you an opportunity to share your writing and get feedback from your classmates.”  I wanted to say, “Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.  We are all in this together.”  Two students reach for a chocolate.  Kimiko opens a bottle of water.  Jose smiles at me.

I lecture for about an hour and then give one of my favorite writing prompts which I have stolen from Natalie Goldberg.  “Write a memory of the color red. You will have five minutes. Just enough time to keep your inner critic at bay.”

Roy interrupts me.  “I don’t know what the color red looks like. I am partially color- blind.”

Everyone puts their pens down. This had never happened to me.“ Okay, Roy , is there a color that you can see?”

“I can see the color yellow.”

“Great, then give me a memory of the color yellow.”

I listen to the sound of clicking computer keys, the snapping of paper turned in a notebook, and the occasional sigh as my students wrestle with this first prompt. Then I let my mind wander. I am with my father whose name is Seymour Roy.  Unlike my student Roy, my dad was completely color-blind. To him, the world was made up of varying shades of gray.      I remember how my mother used to pick out his ties and socks so that he looked presentable for work.  It was always an enigma to me how my father did his job – he was the head chemical engineer and president of the Hoboken Paint Manufacturing Company.  I used to ask him, “Dad, how do you tell one can of paint from another?”  He’d laugh, “Easy, I just look at the label.”

Someone drops their pen and I am back in the classroom. I check my watch.  Six minutes have passed. 

            I announce, “Time’s up.”

            Kimiko says, “That was fast.  I just got started.”

            “Yes, it’s amazing how quickly time passes when you get into your memories.  Would anyone like to read?”

  Roy raises his hand.  He holds his paper in front of his face: “They say that my skin is yellow, but I think it is really brown.  Why would they say it is yellow?  My family’s skin does not look yellow.  I am not a coward nor a flower.”

Jose says, “You really nailed it.  So few words to express such painful feelings.” 

Kimiko asks Roy , “How old were you when this happened?”

“I was just eleven.  I had to say goodbye to everyone I knew in school. We were made to feel un-American. But we got over it.”

The class is stirred by his words, and someone else’s hand shoots up.  I breathe a sigh of relief.  I can tell that this is going to be a good class. 

Return to Prose

Return to Top of  Page

The Bully's Home                                                                                               

by Strat Warden

he boys coasted to the bike rack closest to the mud scraper. Jimmy, Chuck, and Billy wedged their bikes, filling up that rack.

Dennis steered for the other one, still with open slots. He stumbled on an outstretched leg to a leaning halt, petrified, as though under his next step a cottonmouth water moccasin was coiled and hissing.

The monster-boy, Jack Packer, blocked the bike rack. His wry grin challenged.

Dennis lost his balance and set his foot further out. Motionless, he resembled a deer, spotted in the tree line along a county road. Dennis dropped his head and melted into an even smaller boy. He dismounted and walked his bike around to the backside of the full rack. Not finding an open slot, he jammed his front tire between the back wheels of two other bikes.

Packer hulked behind Dennis. “Smart-t-t m-m-m-move, Ch-ch-chub-b-bee!”

Dennis, head bowed, skulked past him.

Packer stuck out a leg and shoved Dennis over it.

Dennis banged off a bike fender and crashed to the ground; his books scattered under chains and pedals.

“N-n-nice g-g-g-going, f-f-f-fatso!” Packer heeled a heavy boot on Dennis’s back, jamming his face into the dirt.

*          *          *

It was Wednesday afternoon, and Jack Packer’s replacement father, greased with hair and crusted in stubble, draped over a sun-bleached-to-gray upholstered couch, its cushions past fluffing for a purpose. Dingy and ragged-kneed army pants and a T-shirt, both stained with various shades of carelessness, covered him. Crumpled Falstaff cans, fallen and tossed, each within a dried stain, cluttered about his feet. Scuffed combat boots lay where they’d dropped. Fungus-nailed great toes jabbed through holes of faded olive socks. Chewed hard butts, some smoked to the nub and crushed and others forgotten, lay abandoned in a pile on a stolen ashtray or littered about the end table and floorboards. Dan gling from two yellow-brown fingers that hung beyond the chair’s right arm, an unfiltered Camel glowed at the base of an insecure ash from where a wandering curl of smoke leaked upward.

While the TV moaned the woes of a lucky, unfortunate contestant on Queen for a Day, Mr. Packer was less asleep than self-medicated.

The back door slammed: the body jerked; the ashes launched.

Mrs. Packer, hair netted and wearing a white bloodstained Campbell Soup factory uniform, whistled “Amazing Grace.” Thinly happy, as an apple is thinly red, she struggled with her burdens. Car keys clanked the countertop as she hugged three large grocery sacks to secure them on the Formica. Springing on each step, she scampered up the stairs to her bedroom and set her purse on the dresser. Teresa Packer tilted the mirror top back, straightened, enjoyed a slow, deep, soothing lungful of air, and smiled. This being a good day, an attractive woman with joyful younger years greeted her.

She slid open the top drawer and lifted a small frame, covered in soft summer-blue cloth. Glass, a single crack across it, preserved the photograph of a loving and happy family: little Jack Goodsel, his father, and her. She cuddled it to her heart, and her eyes softened. Her will pushed the rustlings of the man, reviving downstairs, back from where they came.

“Woman! Smokes?”

She recoiled, hurting from a wound that could never heal—his name; how could I.

“Keys?”

A surrendered sigh left her stooped. She placed the photograph back in hiding and shut the drawer on her past life. “Counter,” she said and headed down.

Cans and boxes crashed to the floor. As she entered the kitchen, Mr. Packer stumbled and caught himself; his fist, clutching a ring of keys, smashed into the door frame. “Goddamn!”

The contents of one brown sack were scattered over the counter and in the sink. The other two lay torn on the floor, where a yellowish slime oozed from an egg carton and two fractured tomatoes bled onto the linoleum.

She turned to the sound of the front door opening and “Mom…”

Serious as the suffering of a child, she pressed a finger to her lips and silenced her son with a look alien to her nature. As his stepfather, cursing his hand, plodded onto the back porch, Jack’s beaming smile disappeared into despair. His mother held up her arm. Jack stepped under it and leaned into her. They took shelter in the kitchen doorway and each other.

“Goin’ bowlin’. DAMN!” Mr. Packer tripped and crashed into a cupboard.

“YELP! Yeeelll...”

Jack and his mother cringed together.

“Your son don’t git rid these damn mutts, you’ll both be sorry!”

His mother wrapped her other arm around Jack’s head and held it against her. Her hand muffled the sound to his ear; then her fingers caressed the scar below his left eye.

Mr. Packer booted a ball of mottled fuzz. It spun across the grey floorboards and smacked against the slats of the far wall. “WHELLLL…UP!”

The screen door banged shut.

Silence.

A car door slammed; an engine roared. The motor running, the key cranked again, “REEECK!”

Scuffing and crushing, tires spit driveway gravel. The engine snarled fainter with each gear’s grinding.

Jack and his mother walked to the open back door.

Scurried to safety, six orphaned, Heinz 57 puppies, trembling, cowered in the corner of the porch.

 Return to Prose

Return to Top of  Page

Return to Art

Riches to Rags

by John Delin                                           

ngrid Cathrina Sjöholm was my great-great grandmother.  She came from well-to-do Swedish families.  It is possible that she was descended from the Sjöholm nobility.  Ingrid was born November 25, 1807 in Kvibille, Halland, to Peter Lorentz Sjöholm (1769-1814) and Christina Maria Stenström (1780-1842).  

Peter Sjöholm was a Kronolänsman (translated as Crown Bailiff or local police chief).  He was first married to Vicar Johannes Dahlgren's daughter, Maria.  They had two sons who died in infancy and Maria died in 1797.  In 1798, Peter married Christina Maria Stenström.  They had six children, including Ingrid.  One of Ingrid's sisters, Agneta Maria,  married the vicar's son Herr Adjunkten (Curate) Hans Bengt Lars Dahlgren.  There were many witnesses at the baptism of their daughter Johanna Cathrina Beata in 1824, signifying that the family was wealthy.

Peter Sjöholm had died in 1814 and Agneta was widowed in 1827.  Agneta and her daughter went to live with her mother.  Ingrid lived there too.

Around 1829, Demoiselle Ingrid Cathrina Sjöholm met Frantz Cabrée (1800-1871), Music Director at the Royal Göta Artillery Regiment in Göteborg.  His father, also Frantz Cabrée (1768-1823), was born in France and had held the same position.  His mother was Christina Åberg.

On April 21, 1830, Ingrid gave birth to a son, Peter Lorentz.  The father was cited in the Church book as Frantz Cabrée.  They never married.  Peter was directly  moved to a foster family in Skrea, Småland and, likely, was sent to his father in Göteborg in 1831.  Ingrid returned to Halland. 

Pehr Andersson Rydin was born March 1, 1816 in Annerstad, Småland to Anders Ryden (dweller at the rye-hill) and Johanna Petersdotter.  He was the youngest of three; Anna Greta was ten years older and Abraham Rydin was his senior by three years.  Poor and uneducated, Abraham and Pehr became Lumpsamlare, Ragmen.  Ragmen were employed by paper mills to collect the raw material used in production.  They ranged far and wide scavenging for textiles. 

Many Ragmen were resandefolket, members of the Swedish Traveler community (called tatarer at that time).  There is no evidence whatsoever that the Rydin brothers were Travelers.  But people disdained Ragmen, complaining of theft, disorder and begging.  Abraham disappeared around 1833.  Pehr also became known in 1839 as a handlande, dealer, and in 1842 as a gårdfarihandlare, peddler.

Meanwhile Ingrid gave birth in Eftra, Halland to a daughter Fredrika on March 6, 1835.  No father was listed in the Church record. It is possible that Ingrid had met Pehr Rydin while he was roaming and he was Fredrika's father.  A few short years later, Ingrid and Fredrika were back in Ingrid's birth parish, Kvibille.  They were either Inhyses, defined as persons living in another's household or  Inhyseshjon, dependant tenants, needy and housed by the parish.  I don't know what became of Fredrika. She might have gone to stay with family or a foster family. 

In 1838 Ingrid was back in Annerstad, Småland   She gave birth to my great grandfather, Fredrik Wilhelm, on July 5, 1838.  The Vicar had named Ragman P. Rydin as Fredrik's father.  And then he crossed out Rydin's name.  Pehr was believed to be engaged or married to another woman.  If that were the case, both Ingrid and Pehr would be fined.  Instead, the Vicar deemed Fredrik illegitimate and cited no father even though Pehr was listed as a witness at the baptism.  

There is evidence that Pehr and Ingrid were married around 1839 and they moved to Hamneda, Småland in that year with Fredrik.  On November 13, 1839 Ingrid's uncle Karl Sjöholm  died.  Ingrid stated that she was married to the dealer Pehr Rydin.  Pehr had produced a letter from the Bishop dated April  8, 1840 that said he had been divorced from a marriage or engagement and was free to marry again. 

Can it be proven that Pehr was Fredrik's father?  To quote Lawyer Sharkey from Donald Duck and the Golden Helmet :  "Flickus, flackus, fumdeedledum! which is legal language for 'how can you prove that he isn't?'"

Mamselle Ingrid Cathrina Sjöholm and Ragman Pehr Andersson Rydin had two more children:  Johanna Maria Persdotter (March 8, 1841- December 29, 1842) and Johan August Persson Åberg (January 25, 1844-June 16, 1936). Johan fathered ten daughters and one son. He was a soldier and received the Royal Vasa Medal in 1927.

Ingrid and Pehr were near the bottom of the economic ladder.  Pehr was also cited as either Inhyses or Inhyseshjon.  ("Hokus, locus, jokus! which means, 'to the landlords belong the doorknobs.'")

There were court cases against Pehr but none were settled.  He was described as a person of bad reputation and as a "vagrant."  Ingrid and Pehr, unable to raise Fredrik Wilhelm, sent him to live with a foster family in Snöstorp, Halland in 1846. 

Anders Nylander, born 1818 and his wife, Bengta Bengtsdotter, born 1803, were childless and took eight-year-old Fredrik as their son.  It seems probable that Pehr, the ragman, knew Anders, who was a paper mill journeyman   The Nylanders raised my great grandfather, who became a paper maker.  Fredrik took his foster father's surname and lived his life as Fredrik Wilhelm Nylander.  He married and had five children.

Ingrid Cathrina Sjöholm died a pauper in Hamneda, 1874 with the knowledge that her sons with Pehr were safe and secure.  Pehr Andersson Rydin may have left then or some years earlier.  Records say only that he "departed from the place."   Alone, reviled and hounded by the authorities, he may have moved south to Skåne or perhaps he took to the Småland forest and lived by his wits..

Där plogen inte kan gå
Eller lien göra sin blåsa,
Står där i skogen

Thanks to Yvonne Henriksson and Guno Haskå for the genealogical information, Lars Henriksson for the clip art, Édouard Manet for the painting, Vilhelm Moberg for inspiration and Carl Barks for Donald Duck and the Golden Helmet.